High Line Channel: Eyeballing

HIGH LINE CHANNEL
Eyeballing
A film program curated by Lisa Oppenheim and Mike Sperlinger
Featuring films by Rosalind Nashashibi, Paul Strand and Charles Sheeler, and Karl Kels
On View Tuesday, March 6, 2012 - Tuesday, April 10, 2012
Exterior Wall next to the High Line at West 22nd Street

High Line Art, presented by Friends of the High Line, is pleased to announce Eyeballing, a film program curated by Lisa Oppenheim and Mike Sperlinger. Eyeballing is the third installment on HIGH LINE CHANNEL, an outdoor video program that features daily screenings of art films and videos, historic works, new productions, and curated series, from dusk to 10:00 PM. HIGH LINE CHANNEL is projected on a building to the east of the High Line at West 22nd Street, where it is visible from the park’s Seating Steps, as well as the sidewalk on West 22nd Street.

The program Eyeballing includes three films which are connected through a shared perspective of the Manhattan streetscape. Each film presents the camera as a means of a poetic and critical examination of city life. It is through this method that the city becomes a symphony, a stage, and a space that returns our gaze, rather than one which monitors our actions.

Eyeballing (2005), by UK based Rosalind Nashashibi anthropomorphizes everyday objects and architecture of an urban landscape, such as toothbrushes and manhole covers. These situations, usually featuring eyes, a nose, and mouth, engage the viewer through the artist’s camera lens. Emphasis is drawn on their voyeurism through polarizing footage of New York City police officers standing around a station house doorway.

Manhatta (1921) is by American photographer Paul Strand and artist Charles Sheeler. The film is a City Symphony film; a predominately silent era genre of documentary filmmaking that was both structured by and composed of images of everyday life in different urban centers.

Sidewalk (2008) by Karl Kels was made while the Berlin-based artist was in working in residency in Lower Manhattan. The film consists of shots from his window onto the sidewalk below through different seasons, climate conditions, and traffic events. The static position of the camera produces a counterpoint to the changes of weather and urban life occurring within the frame.

“We are thrilled to collaborate with artist Lisa Oppenheim and curator Mike Sperlinger to develop this film program for HIGH LINE CHANNEL,” said Cecilia Alemani, the Donald R. Mullen, Jr. Curator and Director of High Line Art. “Lisa and Mike have selected an unexpected combination of contemporary and historical works for Eyeballing. The films by Rosalind Nashashibi, Paul Strand and Charles Sheeler, and Karl Kels compose a hymn for New York’s bustling street life and spectacular architecture. There is no better setting to look at the city than the vantage point of the High Line.”

About the Curators

Lisa Oppenheim is an artist based in New York. She has exhibited widely including recent exhibitions and screenings at the Deutsche and New York Guggenheim Museums, the Institute for Contemporary Art in London, the New Museum, and Performa 11. She is represented in New York by Harris Lieberman where she will have a solo show in May. She is also represented by Klosterfelde in Berlin, The Approach in London and Galerie Juliette Jongma in Amsterdam. Mike Sperlinger is Assistant Director of LUX, London. As a freelance writer, he has written for magazines and journals, including frieze, Art Monthly, Radical Philosophy, and Afterall, and is the editor of two books: Afterthought: New Writing on Conceptual Art (Rachmaninoffs, 2005) and Kinomuseum: Towards An Artists' Cinema (Kuzfilmtage Oberhausen, 2008).

Support

HIGH LINE CHANNEL is presented by Friends of the High Line and the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation. High Line Art Commissions are made possible by Donald R. Mullen, Jr., with additional support from Vital Projects Fund, Inc. High Line Art is supported, in part, with public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council and from the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.